Coastal Fiber Privacy Policy

Coastal Fiber, in part­ner­ship with Darien Tele­phone Com­pa­ny, is com­mit­ted to respect­ing and pro­tect­ing the pri­va­cy of our cus­tomers. As dis­cussed below, we have strict poli­cies gov­ern­ing access by employ­ees and oth­ers to cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tions and infor­ma­tion. We access cus­tomer accounts, records, or reports for autho­rized busi­ness pur­pos­es only. We edu­cate our employ­ees about their oblig­a­tion to safe­guard cus­tomer infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and we hold them account­able for their actions. In short, pri­va­cy is a pri­or­i­ty for Coastal Fiber in all aspects of our busi­ness.

This Cus­tomer Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy is divid­ed into four sec­tions: Sec­tion I: gen­er­al prin­ci­ples that express Coastal Fiber’s com­mit­ment to assur­ing strong and mean­ing­ful cus­tomer pri­va­cy pro­tec­tion; Sec­tion II: Coastal Fiber’s pro­tec­tion of the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of Cus­tomer Pro­pri­etary Net­work Infor­ma­tion (CPNI); Sec­tion III: Coastal Fiber’s “Do Not Call” prac­tices, which are designed to pro­tect our cus­tomers from unwant­ed tele­mar­ket­ing; and Sec­tion IV: Coastal Fiber’s con­tact infor­ma­tion should you have any ques­tions about this pol­i­cy or Coastal Fiber’s pri­va­cy prac­tices more gen­er­al­ly.

General Privacy Principles

The fol­low­ing prin­ci­ples express Coastal Fiber’s com­mit­ment to assur­ing strong and mean­ing­ful cus­tomer pri­va­cy pro­tec­tion, and are intend­ed to guide Coastal Fiber’s efforts to bal­ance cus­tomer pri­va­cy with cus­tomer inter­est in receiv­ing qual­i­ty ser­vices. These prin­ci­ples apply to our use of “indi­vid­ual” cus­tomer infor­ma­tion – that is, infor­ma­tion about spe­cif­ic cus­tomers. “Indi­vid­ual” cus­tomer infor­ma­tion includes “per­son­al infor­ma­tion” – infor­ma­tion par­tic­u­lar to you, includ­ing your address, phone num­ber, fax num­ber and email address – and “non-per­son­al infor­ma­tion” that may include infor­ma­tion such as your net­work traf­fic data, ser­vices and fea­tures used or call record details. These poli­cies are ful­ly con­sis­tent with applic­a­ble laws and reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing pri­va­cy, includ­ing the reg­u­la­tions of the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (“FCC”). Indi­vid­ual cus­tomer infor­ma­tion is dis­tinct from “aggre­gat­ed” cus­tomer infor­ma­tion, which does not reveal a customer’s iden­ti­ty. Fur­ther, the exam­ples pro­vid­ed below are intend­ed to be illus­tra­tive, not all-inclu­sive.

1. Coastal Fiber Obtains and Uses Individual Customer Information for Business Purposes Only.

Coastal Fiber obtains and uses cus­tomer infor­ma­tion that helps us to pro­vide our cus­tomers with qual­i­ty telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices. In addi­tion to sup­port­ing the direct pro­vi­sion of ser­vice, this infor­ma­tion may be used to pro­tect cus­tomers, employ­ees, and prop­er­ty against fraud, theft or abuse; to con­duct indus­try or con­sumer sur­veys; and to main­tain good cus­tomer rela­tions. Access to data­bas­es con­tain­ing cus­tomer infor­ma­tion is lim­it­ed to employ­ees who need that infor­ma­tion to per­form their jobs. These employ­ees are required to fol­low strict rules when han­dling cus­tomer infor­ma­tion, and are sub­ject to dis­ci­pli­nary action if they fail to do so.

In order to bet­ter serve our cus­tomers, we may ask them ques­tions to elic­it addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about their spe­cial needs and inter­ests. For exam­ple, we may ask whether cus­tomers work at home, whether any mem­bers of the house­hold have spe­cial needs, or whether teenagers reside in the house­hold in order to deter­mine whether cus­tomers may be inter­est­ed in or might ben­e­fit from addi­tion­al lines or ser­vices. In all cas­es, the infor­ma­tion we gath­er is used to facil­i­tate the pro­vi­sion of qual­i­ty cus­tomer ser­vice. We do not share this infor­ma­tion with third par­ties to mar­ket non-Coastal Fiber ser­vices to our cus­tomers.

2. Coastal Fiber Collects Information from Customers in a Number of Different Ways.

Coastal Fiber may col­lect infor­ma­tion from you through com­mu­ni­ca­tions such as via the web, or by phone, email or mail deliv­ery, or through the ser­vices pro­vid­ed to you as the cus­tomer.

You may vis­it our site with­out divulging any per­son­al infor­ma­tion; how­ev­er, there are areas of the web­site that might require per­son­al infor­ma­tion in order to con­tact Coastal Fiber direct­ly, specif­i­cal­ly, when reg­is­ter­ing e‑mails, obtain­ing remote access, and con­tact­ing online tech­ni­cal sup­port.

Infor­ma­tion may also be col­lect­ed in the fol­low­ing ways:

Brows­ing Our Site

• IP address­es may be col­lect­ed for the pur­pos­es of sys­tem admin­is­tra­tion, to gath­er broad demo­graph­ic infor­ma­tion, and to mon­i­tor the lev­el of activ­i­ty on our site.
• Infor­ma­tion may be col­lect­ed regard­ing the refer­ring URL, which brows­er you used to come to our site, and the pages of our site that you viewed dur­ing your vis­it and any search terms entered on our site.
• E‑mails may be sent by the cus­tomer to Coastal Fiber on this web­site. Coastal Fiber may retain the infor­ma­tion in any e‑mail that you send to us, such as your name, e‑mail, address, or tele­phone num­ber.

Broad­band Inter­net Ser­vice

• Coastal Fiber may mon­i­tor the net­work and take mea­sure­ments of net­work per­for­mance and the per­for­mance of your Inter­net con­nec­tion to improve the customer’s, or Coastal Fiber’s, over­all ser­vice lev­els.
• Dur­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Coastal Fiber for ser­vice sup­port, we may also access infor­ma­tion about your cus­tomer premise equip­ment such as com­put­ers and wire­less modem devices or oth­er device set­tings to pro­vide cus­tomized tech­ni­cal sup­port or to install spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tions or ser­vices for your use.
• Coastal Fiber reserves the right to access broad­band traf­fic from indi­vid­ual accounts for the pur­pos­es of gen­er­al main­te­nance and man­age­ment of the net­work, as well as upon request by law enforce­ment offi­cials.

Pro­vi­sion of Infor­ma­tion by Third Par­ties

Coastal Fiber may obtain cred­it infor­ma­tion about you from third par­ties when you pur­chase prod­ucts or ser­vices from Coastal Fiber.

Infor­ma­tion Col­lect­ed on Our Web­sites

We col­lect data about vis­i­tors to our sub­scriber web­site, using some auto­mat­ed means such as Google Ana­lyt­ics, and reserve the right to use oth­er meth­ods such as cook­ies, clear GIFs, and pas­sive auto­mat­ic elec­tron­ic col­lec­tion. We may work with third-par­ty com­pa­nies to engage in such col­lec­tion.

Log Files.

Our log track­ing col­lects vis­i­tors’ IP address­es to ana­lyze trends, admin­is­ter our web­site, track vis­i­tor move­ment, and gath­er broad demo­graph­ic infor­ma­tion to help deter­mine the type of infor­ma­tion vis­i­tors are inter­est­ed in see­ing on our web­site. This track­ing only col­lects IP address­es and not per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion. Vis­i­tors are not per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able with­in our log files. Coastal Fiber only uses this infor­ma­tion for inter­nal pur­pos­es and does not share this infor­ma­tion with non-affil­i­at­ed com­pa­nies or insti­tu­tions.

Cook­ies.

A “Cook­ie” is a piece of infor­ma­tion that is sent from a Coastal Fiber web serv­er to a visitor’s brows­er and stored on the visitor’s hard dri­ve. Coastal Fiber uses Cook­ies when a cus­tomer or vis­i­tor orders a prod­uct or reg­is­ters for a spe­cif­ic pro­gram. The Cook­ie stores infor­ma­tion that allows Coastal Fiber’s web­site to remem­ber a cus­tomer or vis­i­tor the next time he or she vis­its it. Cook­ies also allow us to tai­lor our web­site to bet­ter match cus­tomers’ or oth­er vis­i­tors’ inter­ests and pref­er­ences. The applic­a­ble par­ty may choose to dis­able Cook­ies by chang­ing his or her brows­er set­tings; how­ev­er, such par­ty may not be able to access some of the infor­ma­tion or fea­tures on our web­site after doing so.

3. Coastal Fiber Informs Customers Regarding How Information Is Used.

Coastal Fiber uses cus­tomer infor­ma­tion in a trans­par­ent fash­ion, and dis­clos­es to cus­tomers the types of infor­ma­tion Coastal Fiber obtains about them how and when that infor­ma­tion is used, when that infor­ma­tion might be dis­closed, the strin­gent mea­sures we employ to pro­tect that infor­ma­tion, and ways that cus­tomers can restrict the use or dis­clo­sure of that infor­ma­tion. This Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy is avail­able on our web­site at www.coastalfiber.com and from Coastal Fiber ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

4. Coastal Fiber Gives Customers Opportunities To Control Access to Information.

Coastal Fiber is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­trol how Coastal Fiber uses cus­tomer infor­ma­tion about them. Cus­tomers may opt out of our direct mail­ings and oth­er ser­vice mar­ket­ing pro­grams. A cus­tomer may indi­cate a change in such pref­er­ences at any time by con­tact­ing Coastal Fiber cus­tomer ser­vice.

We do use indi­vid­ual cus­tomer infor­ma­tion inter­nal­ly for plan­ning pur­pos­es – so that we can, for exam­ple, devel­op, test and mar­ket new prod­ucts and ser­vices that meet the needs of our cus­tomers. Ordi­nar­i­ly, such infor­ma­tion is com­bined into aggre­ga­tions that do not include indi­vid­ual cus­tomer iden­ti­ties. Under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, we are required by law to dis­close the aggre­gat­ed infor­ma­tion to oth­er com­pa­nies, but in such cas­es cus­tomer iden­ti­ties are not includ­ed.

5. Coastal Fiber Enables Customers To Control How Coastal Fiber Discloses Individual Information.

Ordi­nar­i­ly, Coastal Fiber will only share indi­vid­ual cus­tomer infor­ma­tion with per­sons or enti­ties out­side the com­pa­ny to assist us in the pro­vi­sion of ser­vices to which the cus­tomer sub­scribes, or as required by law or to pro­tect the safe­ty of cus­tomers, employ­ees, or prop­er­ty. We do not use third-par­ty mar­keters, nor do we share access to indi­vid­ual cus­tomer infor­ma­tion derived from the pro­vi­sion of Coastal Fiber telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices with oth­er com­pa­nies inter­est­ed in mar­ket­ing oth­er ser­vices to our cus­tomers – and we would not do so with­out the con­sent of the cus­tomer. Coastal Fiber is com­mit­ted to ensur­ing that cus­tomer infor­ma­tion is not used with­out the knowl­edge and per­mis­sion of our cus­tomers.

How­ev­er, there are excep­tions to our gen­er­al prac­tice. For exam­ple, unless you request oth­er­wise, we may share cer­tain non-sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion with our affil­i­at­ed com­pa­nies with whom we have estab­lished busi­ness rela­tion­ships. In addi­tion, if Coastal Fiber enters a merg­er, acqui­si­tion, or sale of all or a por­tion of its assets, a customer’s per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion will, in most instances, be trans­ferred as a part of the trans­ac­tion, sub­ject to required notices to affect­ed cus­tomers. In addi­tion, we may, where per­mit­ted by law, pro­vide infor­ma­tion to cred­it bureaus, or pro­vide infor­ma­tion and/or sell receiv­ables to col­lec­tion agen­cies, to obtain pay­ment for Coastal Fiber billed prod­ucts and ser­vices. We are also required by law to pro­vide billing name and address infor­ma­tion to a customer’s long dis­tance car­ri­er and oth­er tele­phone com­pa­nies to allow them to bill for telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices. (By law, cus­tomers with non-pub­lished or unlist­ed ser­vice have the right not to have their billing name and address dis­closed when they make a call­ing card call or accept a col­lect or third par­ty call. How­ev­er, if they do restrict dis­clo­sure, they will be unable to make call­ing card calls or accept col­lect and third par­ty calls.) Sim­i­lar­ly, we are required to pro­vide direc­to­ry pub­lish­ers with sub­scriber list­ing infor­ma­tion – name, address, and phone num­ber, and for yel­low page adver­tis­ers, pri­ma­ry adver­tis­ing clas­si­fi­ca­tion – for pur­pos­es of pub­lish­ing and deliv­er­ing direc­to­ries. In addi­tion, under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, we may share cus­tomer infor­ma­tion with oth­er car­ri­ers or with law enforce­ment, for exam­ple, to pre­vent and inves­ti­gate fraud or oth­er unlaw­ful use of com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices.

6. All Coastal Fiber Employees Are Responsible For Safeguarding Customer Communications and Information.

Coastal Fiber takes rea­son­able pre­cau­tions to pro­tect your per­son­al infor­ma­tion against unau­tho­rized access. Coastal Fiber requires Coastal Fiber per­son­nel to be aware of and pro­tect the pri­va­cy of all forms of cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tions as well as indi­vid­ual cus­tomer records. Coastal Fiber makes clear that employ­ees who fail to com­ply with its pri­va­cy poli­cies will face dis­ci­pli­nary action, which can include dis­missal. All employ­ees are trained regard­ing their respon­si­bil­i­ties to safe­guard cus­tomer pri­va­cy. We strive to ensure that infor­ma­tion we have about our cus­tomers is accu­rate, secure, and con­fi­den­tial, and to ensure that our employ­ees com­ply with our pri­va­cy pol­i­cy.

We nev­er tam­per with, intrude upon or dis­close the exis­tence or con­tents of any com­mu­ni­ca­tion or trans­mis­sion, except as required by law or the prop­er man­age­ment of our net­work. Access to data­bas­es con­tain­ing cus­tomer infor­ma­tion is lim­it­ed to employ­ees who need it to per­form their jobs – and they fol­low strict guide­lines when han­dling that infor­ma­tion. We use safe­guards to increase data accu­ra­cy and to iden­ti­fy and authen­ti­cate the sources of cus­tomer infor­ma­tion. We use locks and phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty mea­sures, sign-on and pass­word con­trol pro­ce­dures, and inter­nal audit­ing tech­niques to pro­tect against unau­tho­rized use of ter­mi­nals and entry into our data sys­tems. Coastal Fiber requires that records be safe­guard­ed from loss, theft, unau­tho­rized dis­clo­sure, and acci­den­tal destruc­tion.

In addi­tion, sen­si­tive, con­fi­den­tial, or pro­pri­etary records are pro­tect­ed and main­tained in a secure envi­ron­ment. It is our pol­i­cy to destroy records con­tain­ing sen­si­tive, con­fi­den­tial, or pro­pri­etary infor­ma­tion in a secure man­ner. Hard copy con­fi­den­tial, pro­pri­etary, or sen­si­tive doc­u­ments are made unread­able before dis­po­si­tion or recy­cling, and elec­tron­ic media must be destroyed using meth­ods that pre­vent access to infor­ma­tion stored in that type of media. Just as employ­ees would report stolen prop­er­ty, miss­ing records and sus­pi­cious inci­dents involv­ing records are referred to Coastal Fiber Man­age­ment. We encour­age our employ­ees to be proac­tive in imple­ment­ing and enforc­ing Coastal Fiber’s pri­va­cy poli­cies. If employ­ees become aware of prac­tices that raise pri­va­cy or secu­ri­ty con­cerns, they are required to report them to their super­vi­sors.

Coastal Fiber’s reg­u­la­to­ry depart­ment is respon­si­ble for ensur­ing that all Coastal Fiber busi­ness units and their employ­ees com­ply with pri­va­cy laws and reg­u­la­tions. Coastal Fiber also requires any con­sul­tants, sup­pli­ers, and con­trac­tors that may come into con­tact with cus­tomer pro­pri­etary infor­ma­tion to observe these pri­va­cy rules with respect to any of our cus­tomers’ indi­vid­ual cus­tomer infor­ma­tion. They must abide by these prin­ci­ples when con­duct­ing work for us, and they will be held account­able for their actions.

7. Coastal Fiber Takes Special Care to Protect the Safety and Privacy of Young People Using Its Services.

Coastal Fiber does not know­ing­ly col­lect infor­ma­tion about chil­dren. Coastal Fiber believes that chil­dren should get their par­ents’ con­sent before giv­ing out any per­son­al infor­ma­tion. Coastal Fiber encour­ages par­ents and legal guardians to par­tic­i­pate in their child’s expe­ri­ence using Coastal Fiber’s ser­vices. Chil­dren should always ask a par­ent for per­mis­sion before send­ing per­son­al infor­ma­tion to Coastal Fiber.

8. Coastal Fiber Complies with All Applicable Privacy Laws and Regulations Wherever Coastal Fiber Does Business.

Cus­tomer and pol­i­cy­mak­er per­cep­tions of pri­va­cy have changed over time and will con­tin­ue to do so. Changes in tech­nol­o­gy can also alter what is appro­pri­ate in pro­tect­ing pri­va­cy. Laws may change accord­ing­ly. We reg­u­lar­ly exam­ine – and update as nec­es­sary –Coastal Fiber’s pri­va­cy poli­cies and inter­nal pro­ce­dures to ensure com­pli­ance with applic­a­ble law and evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Coastal Fiber also will mon­i­tor cus­tomer needs and expec­ta­tions. Coastal Fiber will work with pol­i­cy­mak­ers and con­sumers to ensure that we con­tin­ue to safe­guard pri­va­cy, giv­ing cus­tomers choic­es, flex­i­bil­i­ty and con­trol. Coastal Fiber con­sid­ers pri­va­cy laws and reg­u­la­tions to be the min­i­mum stan­dards to which we will adhere in pro­tect­ing pri­va­cy. In addi­tion to com­ply­ing with the law, Coastal Fiber will adhere to its inter­nal pri­va­cy poli­cies and pro­ce­dures wher­ev­er we do busi­ness.

9. Coastal Fiber Gives an Authorized Gov’t Agency Access to Customer Information Only Upon Valid Request.

Coastal Fiber may release cus­tomer infor­ma­tion in response to requests from gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies, includ­ing law enforce­ment and nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies, in accor­dance with fed­er­al statu­to­ry require­ments or pur­suant to court order. Before releas­ing any cus­tomer infor­ma­tion, Coastal Fiber will ensure that the under­ly­ing gov­ern­men­tal request sat­is­fies all pro­ce­dur­al and sub­stan­tive legal require­ments and is oth­er­wise prop­er. For exam­ple, Coastal Fiber will ensure that any court orders are valid, prop­er­ly issued, and legal­ly enforce­able. Except as required by law or with the approval of the cus­tomer, Coastal Fiber will not release any cus­tomer infor­ma­tion in response to sub­poe­nas or sim­i­lar requests issued by pri­vate par­ties. Fur­ther, Coastal Fiber will be dili­gent in authen­ti­cat­ing the valid­i­ty of any “gov­ern­men­tal” request to ensure that the request actu­al­ly orig­i­nates from an autho­rized gov­ern­ment agency.

Further Information

While we have made sig­nif­i­cant efforts to pro­tect your per­son­al infor­ma­tion, we can­not ensure or war­rant the secu­ri­ty of any infor­ma­tion you trans­mit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, no data trans­mis­sion over the Inter­net can be guar­an­teed to be 100% secure and we will not be held liable should a third par­ty ille­gal­ly obtain your per­son­al infor­ma­tion via Inter­net trans­mis­sion.

Coastal Fiber reserves the right to change, mod­i­fy or update this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy at any time with­out notice. In the event of any mod­i­fi­ca­tion, we will post the changes in this Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy so that you will always know what infor­ma­tion we are gath­er­ing and how we might use that infor­ma­tion. How­ev­er, if such changes are mate­r­i­al, we will either announce the change on the home page of the site or take such oth­er action as we deem appro­pri­ate under the cir­cum­stances. Accord­ing­ly, you should peri­od­i­cal­ly vis­it this page to deter­mine the cur­rent Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy to which you are bound.

If you have any ques­tions or com­ments con­cern­ing this Cus­tomer Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy, or if you believe that the Com­pa­ny has not adhered to its pri­va­cy pol­i­cy, please con­tact us, call Coastal Fiber’s cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ment. You may also con­tact Coastal Fiber via reg­u­lar mail at Coastal Fiber, P.O. Box 575, Darien, GA 31305.

You may also wish to view the Coastal Fiber App Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy.